Provided by Dow Jones By Maria Armental Coupang Inc. s stock fell 6.5% to $33.05 on a projected deceleration in the second quarter from the year-ago period, which saw a business surge as the pandemic hit South Korea. The South Korean e-commerce giant, backed by Japan s SoftBank Group Corp., in its first earnings report as a public company said it ended the March quarter with more than 16 million active customers, up 21% from the year earlier, while net revenues per active customer rose 44% to $262. Overall, net revenue surged 74% to $4.21 billion, but Coupang s first-quarter loss widened to $295 million, in part tied to higher expenses related to its initial public offering in March along with hiring and technology investments.
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The business
Coupang was founded with the goal of building an end-to-end e-commerce platform for the Korean market. Its flagship offerings are the Rocket Delivery service and the Rocket Wow membership (similar to Amazon Prime) that give people same-day and next-day delivery on millions of items. This part of the business is almost an exact match for what Amazon does in the United States and other markets. However, Coupang goes a step further by offering its members what it calls Dawn Delivery, a program that delivers any item ordered before midnight by 7 a.m. the next day.